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Mädchenblumen, Op 22

Introduction

The four Mädchenblumen Op 22 are to texts by Felix Dahn, who also provided the verses for Schlichte Weisen Op 21. Although lacking the obvious charm and immediacy of the latter group, their rather literary sensibility and refined outlines seem to look forward to the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau, an aesthetic that derived its decorative motifs almost entirely from floral imagery. If one can get beyond the slightly sentimental, if not patronizing mindset inherent in comparing girls to particular flowers—in which Dahn’s verses have something of the professorial—the songs themselves deserve better than the comparative neglect with which they have generally been treated (to which admittedly their high tessitura has probably contributed). The complete set was dedicated to Hans Giessen, principal tenor at the Weimar Court Opera to which Strauss was appointed in 1889, and a regular performer of Strauss’s Lieder with the composer himself at the piano.

Recordings

A further instalment in Hyperion’s major series, skilfully masterminded by accompanist Roger Vignoles, introduces the American soprano Kiera Duffy. The highlight of this balanced recital is the coloratura Op 68 Brentano-Lieder, which owes its rich ...» More

Cornflowers are what I call those girls,
Those gentle girls with blue eyes,
Who simply and serenely impart
The dew of peace, which they draw
From their own pure souls,
To all those they approach,
Unaware of the jewels of feeling
They receive from the hand of Heaven:
You feel so at ease in their company,
As though you were walking through a cornfield,
Rippled by the breath of evening,
Full of devout peace and gentleness.

The opening of this song is highly challenging. There is no piano introduction, and Dahn’s first sentence is almost worthy of Henry James in its length and complexity, replete with subordinate clauses and only coming to earth halfway through page 2. That Strauss manages to create a sense of continuity is in itself an achievement, and it has to be said that the shorter phrases that follow come as some relief, with an inflection at ‘Dir wird so wohl’ that is characteristic of Strauss at his most touching.

Poppies are the round,
Red-blooded, healthy girls,
The brown and freckled ones,
The always good-humoured ones,
Honest and merry as the day is long,
Who never tire of dancing,
Who laugh and cry simultaneously
And only seem to be born
To tease the cornflowers,
And yet often conceal
The gentlest and kindest hearts
As they entwine and play their pranks,
Those whom, God knows,
You would have to stifle with kisses,
Were you not so timid,
For if you embrace the minx,
She will burst, like smouldering timber,
Into flames!

The liveliest and arguably most effective of the four Mädchenblumen, this song is characterized by trills and staccato chords in the accompaniment, and a skittish Zerbinetta-like vocal part, with biting harmonies that look ahead to Salome and beyond. Strauss was proud enough of it to make a separate copy of this song alone, which he dedicated to a young lady in Frankfurt named Marie Fleisch-Prell. History does not relate whether she shared any of the sparkling characteristics of Strauss’s poppies.

But ivy is my name for those
Girls with gentle words,
With sleek fair hair
And slightly arched brows,
With brown soulful
Fawn-like eyes that well up
So often with tears—which are
Simply irresistible;
Without strength and self-confidence,
Unadorned with hidden flowers,
But with inexhaustibly deep,
True and ardent feeling,
They cannot, through their own strength,
Rise from their roots,
But are born to twine themselves
Lovingly round another’s life:—
Their whole life’s destiny
Depends on their first love-entwining,
For they belong to that rare breed of flower
That blossoms only once.

With its suitably clinging triplet accompaniment, this is perhaps the most sentimental song of the set, yet Strauss’s deft harmonic colouring conveys both the ivy’s essential modesty and its hidden depths, and a real sense of mystery in the three chords (marked ppp) that accompany the singer’s closing phrases.

Do you know this flower, the fairy-like
Water-lily, celebrated in legend?
On her ethereal, slender stem
She sways her colourless transparent head;
It blossoms on a reedy and sylvan pond,
Protected by the solitary swan that swims round it,
Opening only to the moonlight,
Whose silver gleam it shares.
Thus it blossoms, the magical sister of the stars,
As the dreamy dark moth, fluttering round it,
Yearns for it from afar at the edge of the pond,
And never reaches it for all its yearning.—
Water-lily is my name for the slender
Maiden with night-black locks and alabaster cheeks
With deep foreboding thoughts in her eyes,
As though she were a spirit imprisoned on earth.
Her speech resembles the silver rippling of waves,
Her silence the foreboding stillness of a moonlit night,
She seems to exchange glances with the stars,
Whose language—their natures being the same—she shares.
You can never tire of gazing into her eyes,
Framed by her silken long lashes,
And you believe, bewitched by their blissful grey,
All that Romantics have ever dreamt about elves.

The most extended of the four Mädchenblumen, Wasserrose begins like Kornblumen with an exceedingly long sentence, which Strauss sets in a kind of dreamy parlando over a gently rocking piano figure. Here the F sharp minor colouring (especially after Efeu’s E flat major) is an essential element, as is the lack of a real bass, the floating pedal point conveying the surface on which the water-lily is floating. Only with the words ‘Wenn sie spricht …’ is the bass fully established, with the voice—now in F sharp major—taking on a more melodic contour, and softly rocking semiquavers conjuring up the bell-like sound of waves (‘Wogenrauschen’). Finally, and exquisitely, Strauss introduces an arching melodic phrase into the right hand—at ‘Du kannst nie ermüden’—so as to end this song, and the set, with voice and piano joined in soaring duet.